AUSTRALIANS AT WAR

THE NEW AMERICAN CENTURY is a compelling factual history of neoconservatism and its influence on US Foreign Policy in the Middle East during the first decade of the twenty-first century. Click on image above for details.

Thursday, January 26, 2012

In a revealing article in the New York Times magazine yesterday, Israeli journalist Ronen Bergman disclosed that in June 2007 he was given a top secret document by former director of Mossad, Meir Amit, that contained a transcript of a conversation between Amit and the then CIA Tel Aviv chief John Hadden.

According to Bergman, part of the transcript read thus:

Amit: “We are approaching a turning point that is more important for you than it is for us. After all, you people know everything. We are in a grave situation, and I believe we have reached it, because we have not acted yet. . . . Personally, I am sorry that we did not react immediately. It is possible that we may have broken some rules if we had, but the outcome would have been to your benefit. I was in favor of acting. We should have struck before the build-up.”

Hadden: “That would have brought Russia and the United States against you.”

Amit: “You are wrong. . . . We have now reached a new stage, after the expulsion of the U.N. inspectors. You should know that it’s your problem, not ours.”

Hadden: “Help us by giving us a good reason to come in on your side. Get them to fire at something, a ship, for example.”

Amit: “That is not the point.”

Hadden: “If you attack, the United States will land forces to help the attacked state protect itself.”

Amit: “I can’t believe what I am hearing.”

Hadden: “Do not surprise us.”

Amit: “Surprise is one of the secrets of success.”

Hadden: “I don’t know what the significance of American aid is for you.”

Amit: “It isn’t aid for us, it is for yourselves.”

While Hadden didn’t actually suggest that the Israelis themselves attack an American ship, it is clear that he did indicate that it should be Israel that manipulates affairs in such a way as to provide a casus belli for the US to enter the war on Israel’s side.

Bergman’s story is revealing for two reasons; firstly, it provides even more credibility to the story of the USS Liberty affair in which the Israel Air Force deliberately attacked a US warship in order to attract the US into their war against the Egyptians by making it look like the attack was carried out by the Egyptians.

Secondly, it is revealing inasmuch that a senior and well respected Israeli journalist should expose the details of the conversation held back in 1967 as Israel was planning to attack Egypt at a time when today Israel is considering its options with regards to attacking Iran and when the US has a considerable armada of warships close to the Iranian shore in the Persian Gulf and Straights of Hamuz. It begs the question: Is Bergman warning the world that what happened forty-five years ago could happen again today?

Jennifer Rubin, herself a neoconservative, writing in the Washington Post is just plain confused and is not sure which way to turn. The only reason I can think of for her feeling the need to write this particular piece was that she is frustrated. Why else would you write something that showed little more than how confused one can be? But Jennifer at the end of her piece resorts to fatalism; ‘whoever wins, wins’.

Indiana State Governor Mitch Daniels has all the charisma of a patch of neatly mown lawn while at the same time having absolutely no idea about Middle Eastern foreign policy. Yet, for some reason, top neocon commentator William Kristol is almost pleading for Daniels to throw his hat into the Republican Presidential race.

But, if Daniels is so lack-lustre in everything neocons are usually looking for in a Republican president, why is Kristol is so intent on getting Daniels in to the race?

Short of Kristol knowing something about Daniels that no other commentator knows about – except, perhaps, the full knowledge that Daniels entering the race just isn’t likely to happen – I can only think that Kristol hopes that some other candidate, the one he and fellow neocon Artur Davis, would really like to see run, Jeb Bush, put his hand up and hop into the race instead.

For all the neocons bluster about domestic politics, one needs to remember that the neoconservatives primary concerns are for the well-being of Israel and their cause of creating a Greater Israel. Their interest in American politics exists primarily and ultimately to serve Israeli interests and the well-being of the state of Israel.

Not unsurprisingly, Gingrich, who has sensed over the last few days that neocon support has been slipping away, has realised this and, desperate for the neocons support, has opted to voice just the hawkish kind of rhetoric the neocons like to hear with regards to Iran but this is unlikely now to be enough to appease the neocons.

As for Ron Paul; the neocons barely venture to mention his name such is their fear of his popularity in both Democrat and Republican ranks.

The coming and passing of the Florida race may well reveal all.

Or not!

It’s easy for commentators – left and right alike – to say there are interesting times ahead as events unfold, but we should all bear in mind what terrible consequences there will be if the wrong choices are made.

Saturday, January 21, 2012

Yesterday I wrote of William Kristol’s ‘exclusive’ article in The Weekly Standard claiming that his office had ‘mysteriously’ received a document that claimed to be a part of the text of the forthcoming Republican response to Obama’s State of the Union Address to be delivered next Tuesday. Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels is down to deliver the Republican response. In the mysterious document it is claimed that Daniels will announce his intention to enter the Republican race if enough Republicans asked him.

It now seems that this whole story was just a desperate attempt by Kristol to lure Daniels into the fray. While Daniels himself is yet to deny that the document is genuine, his office, according to Indychannel.com, has said that “Kristol's piece does not reflect the speech the governor intends to give Tuesday night”.

In other words, it’s a fabrication – regardless of how nicely Daniels’ office phrases it.

Apart from what is fast being exposed as a deliberate deceit from one of neoconservatism’s most senior and influential commentators, the affair highlights how desperate the neoconservatives have become about the current crop of frontrunners for the Republican candidacy both in terms of their right-wing credentials as well as their moral attributes, and also over the influence that Ron Paul is having on the race.

The deceit is one thing but, importantly, the desperation that has caused such a senior neocon to resort to such deceit indicates at the very least that their hopes for a reliably neocon- friendly Republican president at the next election are fading rapidly.

Back in the beginning of December last year I wrote that it was clear that the neoconservatives were unhappy with the current crop of candidates. Kristol gave a list of other potential runners that he would prefer to see run and Mitch Daniels figured well on the list but, as I wrote then: “Mitch Daniels? In May, Kristol was wondering if Daniels might run, but by October his hopes were dashed and they are unlikely to be re-awakened”. Now, it seems, Daniel’s might just be reconsidering his options if what Kristol is telling us is true about a ‘leaked’ document that was mysteriously delivered to Kristol’s offices.

Certainly, the current crop of runners have little going for them from the Republicans point of view. Many have already fallen by the wayside and those that remain are either blighted with something unacceptable in their past or, as in the case of Ron Paul, are completely unacceptable to mainstream Republicans yet popular with many on both sides of the political divide who are fed up with America’s endless wars and threats of war and the outrageous amounts of money that have been wasted on them.

Ron Paul, at first dismissed as being just a radical isolationist and libertarian, has become a real threat to the neocons and their agenda for war against Iran, a war that they hope will bring Israel a little closer to their dream of creating a Greater Israel. The neocons might see Mitch Daniels as a possible alternative to bring the running back to their side of table.

Thursday, January 12, 2012

Israel is so desperate to convince the world that any attack it launches against Iran will be because of its ‘nuclear weapons program’ that it has resorted to a program of murdering Iran’s nuclear scientists in order to bring world public opinion on side to support such an attack.

Yesterday, another of Iran’s top nuclear scientists was murdered by Israel’s Mossad via the use of a magnetic bomb attached to the door of the car the scientist, 32 year old Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan, was travelling in. Roshan is the fifth Iranian scientist since 2007 to be murdered by Israeli terrorists.

Prior to this latest series of murders, (Israel had murdered Egyptian nuclear scientists in the past when Egypt was beginning to develop a nuclear program), Israel and her allies in the West were relying on intense propaganda to convince the West to support an attack against Iran. However, over the last few years, particularly since the US National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) of 2007 assessed that Iran had abandoned it’s nuclear weapons program in 2003, the people of the world aren’t quite so convinced that Iran has any ‘nuclear weapons program’. Subsequent reports from both the US’s NIE’s and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), while stating that Iran is likely to have a ‘nuclear weapons program’, have not been able to produce any actual hard evidence of such a program. All of the NIE’s and IAEA reports since 2007 to date have been based purely on supposition and reports from dissidents and defectors and highly suspect circumstantial evidence.

Israel’s hope is that it will be able to convince the West to attack Iran because of its ‘nuclear weapons program’. Israel knows full well, however, that simply attacking Iran’s nuclear facilities is only likely to delay Iran’s nuclear program – weapon or otherwise – and that the real motive behind such an attack is not so much to destroy Iran’s ‘nuclear weapons program’ but to bring about regime change by destroying Iran’s defence forces and government institutions to the point where the Iranian government is forced to capitulate to Western demands for regime change.

Any attack against Iran will be accompanied by an Israeli attack against Hamas in the Gaza Strip and Hezbollah in Lebanon – and this, of course, is the real motivation for war against Iran.

Israel will go to any lengths to eventually see the fulfillment of their dream of a Greater Israel, a dream that can only be realised without Hezbollah and Hamas to resist them. And to rid themselves of Hamas and Hezbollah, Israel must eliminate Iran’s support of the two Arab organisations.

Saturday, January 07, 2012

In a recent article in National Review Online, Barbara Lerner, an Islamophobic American Zionist and neoconservative writer, has laid it out on the line what the neoconservative goal really is as far as what they want for Israel – and that is nothing less than the annexation by Israel of all of the so-called ‘Biblical Lands’ in order to create a Greater Israel. She writes:

We must end the mindless repetition of enemy propaganda about “occupied land,” and encourage our Israeli allies to annex the whole of Biblical Israel…

Clearly, there are no longer any pretensions about ‘negotiations’ aimed at establishing a ‘Palestinian State’; the Zionists do not want a Palestinian state of any kind. They never have. Endless talk about talks has been aimed at playing for more time while the Zionists and the Israeli right-wing wait for an appropriate moment to find an excuse to launch a war against their enemies Hamas in the Gaza and the West Bank and Hezbollah in south Lebanon; a war so devastating that it will provide Israel with the casus belli to invade and then ultimately annex the Gaza Strip, the West Bank and even south Lebanon up to the Litani River.

Since such a devastating war can only be achieved off the back of a war with Iran who supports both Hamas and Hezbollah, one can now clearly see why the neoconservatives and the Israeli Zionists are so anxious to launch an attack against Iran.

Barbara Lerner has now made it abundantly clear what she and her neoconservative colleagues want – a Greater Israel that exists at the expense of the Palestinian people and their aspirations for a Palestinian State.

Thursday, January 05, 2012

A recent article in Commentary by Jonathan Tobin summed up how arrogant neoconservatives can be when it comes to sticking their noses into the business of other sovereign nations – and, of course, especially Arab nations that are problematic to Israel.

The neoconservative’s greatest fear is that the series of revolutions that last year rolled across North Africa and into the Middle East will bring to power Islamist governments that will not be able to be contained by the US. Never mind that the vast majority of the people of these nations are Muslims and ignoring the fact that elections in Egypt have overwhelmingly favoured theocratic parties and, in particular, the Muslim Brotherhood, the neoconservatives are insisting that the Obama government do not support the interim government that allows the Muslim Brotherhood the opportunity to become a government.

Tobin says that the Obama administration in trying to establish a working relationship with the Muslim Brotherhood is a mistake “not just because it is based on a misperception of the Islamists’ goals regarding democracy and willingness to keep the peace with Israel. It is also a slap in the face of the country’s military government that remains the only obstacle between the Brotherhood and the creation of another Islamic republic”.

For all the neocons talk of ‘democracy’ being allowed to prevail, it seems that a military dictatorship in this case is more preferable – and, indeed, should be supported by the US – if it seems the people are likely to elect a government that is unacceptable to the neoconservatives.

This is not the first time this has happened; as we saw in the 26 January 2006 Palestinian Legislative Council elections when Hamas won government by a handsome majority, the US and Israel, together with their Western allies, simply refused to recognise the elected government. Since they held the purse strings, the Hamas government was unable to function.

Egypt, however, is a different matter. If the Muslim Brotherhood ultimately win government fair and square in the current election series, then the US and their Western allies are going to have a tough time explaining why they can’t support a government that has been democratically elected.

The same is likely to happen in Syria once Assad is gone. The Muslim Brotherhood there is an also very strong and any democratic election held in Syria post-Assad is likely to see an Islamist government formed. And it’s not likely to be any friendlier toward Israel than the current one is. They’ll still be demanding the return of the Golan Heights.

Hypocrisy and arrogance are the values that ‘they’ hate about ‘us’.

Who can blame them?

It’s a good job that the neocons have the likes of Jonathan Tobin on their books to show us how transparent their policies actually are and in which nation their real interests really lay.

They’ve been hanging out in the wings for weeks waiting and watching how each of the candidates are performing, paying particular attention to their foreign policy attributes. It’s odd, however, that Kristol barely even mentioned Santorum as a possibility when he was rummaging around in an article that clearly demonstrated that they were very disappointed with the then field. As I said in my article at the time, Kristol’s list of possibilities then was Mike Huckabee, Sarah Palin, Paul Ryan, Chris Christie, Mitch Daniels, Marco Rubio and Jeb Bush, but I doubt – apart from Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio – that he took any of them seriously.

But now the man with the most influence has come down on the side of Santorum, all we can do now is sit back and watch how all the neocons follow their master’s words.

After his recent visit to Israel, Andrew Bolt, one of Australia’s most notorious Islamophobic racists, has taken the final step required to become a fully-fledged neoconservative. As Bolt himself says, Israel “makes you seem so neoconservative”. And there’s nothing like a trip to Israel to affirm ones aspiration.

The question now, however, is; who paid for it?

Most neocon journos – particularly those in the pay of Murdoch – usually get their trips bought and paid for by some right-wing Zionist lobby organisation or another; its how they keep control of what’s being said in the media about Israel.

It’ll be interesting to see what Bolt will be up to over the coming month as a result of his ‘elevation’ to the ranks of the fully-fledged neocon. Will he still be working for Murdoch? More than likely – despite last month’s wishful thinking on my part. Will he carry on with his column at the Herald-Sun? It’s hard to tell looking at it just at the moment. He’s clearly taken on a column at the UK Spectator but whether or not it’s going to be a regular column isn’t clear. The Spectator is a British neocon monthly owned by the Barclay brothers who also own the UK Daily Telegraph group of publications.

The Spectator audience is a little more upmarket than the redneck knuckle-dragging morons that usually infest his blog at the Herald-Sun, so who know who he’ll be writing for next year. Whoever it is, though, it’ll be interesting to read how he and his mob are going to justify the up-coming war against Iran.

Search This Blog

Followers

About Me

is an Aeronautical Engineer, Historian and general carer of what goes on in the world.
Apart from an earlier career in engineering, Lataan also has a First Class Honours BA degree in History and a PhD in International Politics.
All material on this site is available for use without permission but it would be appreciated if the source is acknowledged.